


tie a knot around your middle

by crickets



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-10
Updated: 2008-11-10
Packaged: 2017-10-02 05:59:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crickets/pseuds/crickets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Words, 1181. <a href="http://crickets.livejournal.com/223756.html">Original Post</a>.</p>
    </blockquote>





	tie a knot around your middle

**Author's Note:**

> Words, 1181. [Original Post](http://crickets.livejournal.com/223756.html).

_She sleeps so close, presses herself so tightly against him that he swears if she gets any closer she’ll sink inside his skin, disappear completely, and become a part of him – a needless, yet somehow vital, organ, the blood pulsing in his veins, a piece of his soul._

-

When Sawyer brings her back, the days have been so many, each one longer than the rest, that he is half-afraid she might not remember, like the last time her trail went cold, afraid that he’ll have to tie a knot around her middle and another around his wrist, just to keep her from getting lost again.

But Claire had smiled when she saw him, and then came hot tears and her hand warm in his palm.

Days later, she’s still by his side.

-

The first days she sleeps, as though her natural rhythms are slightly askew. Sawyer stays close by the tent, waiting, knowing she’ll come looking for him the second she opens her eyes.

Questions are whispered into his ear. _What happened to her?_

“I don’t know,” he says again and again, until they stop asking.

Rose gets it. _Of course she does._ And it comes as no surprise to Sawyer when he overhears them one afternoon, the sun high in the sky, when she brings Claire a bundle of clothing and other sundries she’d been without for too long.

“You haven’t asked where I’ve been.” Claire says. A question. _Why?_

“It doesn’t matter where you’ve been, baby doll,” Rose answers, “just that you’re here now.”

Before Rose leaves, Sawyer calls her name, stops her on the path. He wants to thank her, to tell her that he’s glad she’s here, but the words won’t come and Rose puts a hand to his cheek.

“You just take care of her,” she says. “And I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

-

Nights, Claire pulls the hair away from her face, changes into soft cotton while his back is turned, and asks him to stay.

And every time, he does.

-

They don’t rest, the others. They’re still pretending it’s like before, like someone somewhere knows how to find them somehow. Like any of the answers they seek in the trees might actually mean something. They organize hikes, make speeches, assign tasks. Even with Jack gone, they somehow find a voice to lead.

Sawyer won’t go, can’t. Because Claire squeezes his hand, pleads with eyes like pools. _Don’t leave me._

Charlotte marches across the beach, angry footfalls and sharp angles, pursed lips. Juliet watches, quiet and calm next to Miles.

Charlotte needs convincing. They both know better.

She makes demands, reminds him of his responsibility to these people, how it looks when he sits back and does nothing. Her hand flexes in a fist at her side, but Daniel’s soft touch beside her brings her back.

Sawyer tells her there ain’t nothin’ to be done but to try and live, to make a life now, tells her the only thing that going off into the jungle will do is help to dig another grave.

In the days that follow, camp falls silent with the knowledge that he is right.

-

She’s broken.

That much he can see.

Claire draws circles in the sand and bites the corners of her lips. In rare glimpses, Sawyer can see the life flicker back into her eyes and out again.

He isn’t Jack. He doesn’t want to fix her, but he does want her to be better, in her own way, on her own time.

He just wants her to be okay.

-

Rose dies.

It’s as simple as that.

One day she’s bringing Claire fresh fruit and needling Miles about his manners, and the next? She’s just not.

Claire cries, the rims around her eyes red with grief, and Sawyer hates to admit that he is almost happy to see it. Anything to see that she can feel.

At the funeral, when she goes to Bernard, kisses him on the cheek, tells him how much Rose meant to her, meant to everyone, Sawyer breathes a little easier, feels a little more steady on his feet.

“She’s coming around,” Juliet observes, and Sawyer nods.

“She is,” he agrees. _She is_.

-

When Claire changes, that night, she doesn’t ask Sawyer to turn around, and he doesn’t offer.

“What’s it about death that makes you realize how incredibly alive you are?” she asks, flexing her fingers slowly, open and closed again, the yellow glow from the candle silhouetting her against the walls of their tiny shelter.

Sawyer slips his fingers into hers with the motion, and pulls her to him, sure and gentle.

Claire kisses him then, and Sawyer lets her, opens his mouth and finds hers warm and wet and hungry, finds his hands tangled in her mess of hair. And when she wraps herself around him on their bed on the floor, he lets her do that too. He smoothes his hands down her sides, trailing his fingertips along her skin. She shivers. And when he turns her over, presses inside, she takes a sharp breath, closes her eyes, and pulls him closer.

_Closer._

And closer still.

-

When the first baby is born, it is a symbol of something better, something greater than themselves, something good come of all this. Like Aaron’s birth had once done, the child brings hope.

Juliet can’t explain it. She doesn’t even try. But Daniel offers another of his theories, a shift of balance, a rightening of the world, the order of the universe in line again, somehow.

Sawyer watches as Claire takes her turn with the tiny baby girl, her smile as big as he’d only seen it once before. She carries her over, slips the sleeping newborn into his arms, as light as air.

“They’ve named her Rose,” she tells him, and Sawyer feels his heart rise in his throat, grief and awe both.

“Rose,” he whispers, and she stirs slightly at his voice, gravelly and full of emotion. “Y’got a lot to live up to, kid.”

-

It’s nightfall and Claire walks barefoot through the sand, with Sawyer watching from his perch on a nearby rock.

“We moved,” she says, looking out across the darkened ocean. “I saw the stars change.”

He reaches for her, his hand twining in hers. It is true that they don’t talk about what happened, why she calls for her father while she sleeps, the fact that Aaron is gone. So when Claire talks about the stars, a fact that Daniel had spoken of often in the days after the sky turned white, Sawyer listens.

That’s when he stops apologizing – for not coming for her sooner, for not keeping her safe in the first place. Those words have formed so many times on his lips, the sound not ever coming out quite like he intends. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._ Is what he means to say, always.

But he doesn’t need to say it anymore, not even in his head.

She’s better now.

She’s okay.

_-fin._


End file.
